Posts tagged with "H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture":

A brand-new arts building has made a shimmery landing on the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) campus. Built for collegiate and professional dancers, artists, and actors, the Ent Center for the Arts was designed by one of the late Hugh Hardy's New York firms, H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture (H3), in collaboration with Denver's Semple Brown Design.
The steel-clad facade of the 92,000-square-foot building swoops in and over itself, creating a welcoming arch on the ground floor and balconies above. Inside, visitors can take in shows in a 75-seat black box theater, a 225-seat recital room, a 250-seat flex space for performing arts, and a 750-seat all-purpose theater, complete with an orchestra pit. For visual arts, the main lobby doubles as a 2,500-square-foot art gallery, with ceiling rigs to suspend larger works. In the daytime, tall glass windows invite students to lounge, study, and enjoy the space.
The $70 million project broke ground in August 2015 and construction wrapped earlier this year.
This story was first reported by the Denver Post.

[UPDATE, 4/28/17] A memorial service for friends and family will be held on Wednesday, May 10, 2017, at the The New Victory Theater (209 West 42nd Street) from 5:00 to 6:00pm.
Hugh Hardy, the New York architect who worked on almost every major theater in the city, has died today at age 84.
Throughout his career, he worked on venues like Radio City Music Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and, with Eero Saarinen, the renovation of the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center.
Beyond the theater, Hardy was responsible for the revamp of the Rainbow Room and the Windows on the World restaurant in Minoru Yamasaki's World Trade Center, two profoundly see-and-be-seen New York spaces. Besides those rooms, many office workers who eat lunch outdoors know his designs through Bryant Park's kiosks, grill, and cafe, as well as the kiosks in Greeley and Herald squares. His third firm's recent work includes BAM's Theatre for a New Audience at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. That project, by H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture,won an AIA New York merit award in 2015.
Hardy influenced architecture outside the city, too. In the 1970s, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (HHPA), the second firm he founded, completed a health center in the midcentury capitalist utopia of Columbus, Indiana.
Following his passing this morning, Hardy's friends and colleagues took to Twitter with condolences and praise for his contributions to the profession:

Very sad news in the architecture world: Hugh Hardy, master architect of theaters, restorations, and ultimate New Yorker, has just died.

We mourn the loss of Hugh Hardy. It's impossible to imagine New York City without Hugh, a brilliant architect and civic visionary. pic.twitter.com/SP9VOOdh3l
— Urban Design Forum (@UDFNYC) March 17, 2017

In the 1970s I was a project architect for the New York–based architectural firm Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, (HHPA) and worked on a medical clinic for the Cummins Engine Company called the Columbus Occupational Health Association (COHA). It won a national AIA Honor Award in 1976 and served its client for over 40 years. Now the building is for sale.
In the 1960s, in a small town in Indiana, a seed of design excellence was planted.
As a patron of modern architecture, J. Irwin Miller had a goal to make Columbus, “the very best community of its size in the country.” “We would like to see it become the city in which the smartest, the ablest, the best young families anywhere would like to live,” he said.
The result was a small Midwestern city filled with buildings designed by a who’s who of American architecture including, Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Kevin Roche, Richard Meier, Harry Weese, César Pelli, Gunnar Birkerts, Robert Venturi, Robert Stern, and many others.
Columbus Occupational Health Association
In 1969, HHPA was selected for an outpatient medical clinic to serve Cummins Engine Company and several other industrial firms in the Columbus area.
At that time medical clinics and hospitals were intimidating environments, typically a collection of enclosed rooms off of long sterile corridors—places most people were not enthusiastic about visiting.
Cummins wanted something new and innovative and commissioned a study by the Kaiser Foundation, which recommended a cooperative health center. The study suggested that the new building might serve as a national model, so Cummins encouraged the architects to contemplate what environments would be appropriate for healthcare delivery in the future. HHPA sought to create an atmosphere of openness, hope, and healing. It analyzed the program and developed spaces organized around open, sloped walkways bathed in natural light from skylights above.
Ultimately COHA offered a new paradigm for outpatient healthcare delivery that welcomed patients and staff in a fresh, expressive environment. Instead of hiding technology behind walls and ceilings, the structure and mechanical systems were exposed and celebrated in bright colors. Visitors experienced the whole building giving them an awareness of place.
The building, completed in 1973, was selected in 1976 for a national AIA Honor Award. The jury commented: “Careful organization of the ordinary mechanical and structural elements brings interest and excitement to this small health center… a well-organized plan exposes routine medical functions to both patient and technician which relieves the tedium of clinical work and the anxiety of patients.”
I visited the building in 2012, and met with several staff members. They were enthusiastic about working there and told me that patients and staff found that most of the original design was still serving their needs.
Now the building is for sale. COHA has moved to new quarters, the Columbus Occupational Health Association has evolved, and in mid-June it relocated to downtown Columbus and is now called the Cummins LiveWell Center.
An Uncertain Future
What does the future hold for the COHA building and why should we care? Besides people’s affection and pleasant memories, why should COHA be saved and why is it important in architectural history? At the time it broke new ground in many ways. It celebrated the functions and technology that made the building work. More importantly, it showed all of us that going to the doctor doesn’t have to be a scary thing. By opening up the inside, bringing in natural light, and allowing patients to see inside technical spaces like the laboratory, COHA taught us that being healthy and caring for our well-being can be an uplifting experience.
There’s a famous quote from Winston Churchill, “First we shape our buildings, thereafter, they shape us.” HHPA shaped COHA to be a simple black glass box on the outside with a bold sloped skylight and a dynamic inside, that treated visitors to a potpourri of shapes, colors and spaces.
The philosophy of challenging the status quo and reinventing how healthcare is delivered helped make COHA unique. It has influenced how architects design medical buildings and how medical providers interact with their patients.
Unfortunately there are no preservation laws in the city of Columbus, Indiana. COHA could be sold and demolished. Or it could be saved and adapted to a new use.
Columbus has a strong sense of community and respects its legacy of design excellence. It has created Landmark Columbus, whose mission is, “To care for and celebrate the world-renowned design heritage of the Columbus, Indiana, area.” Richard McCoy, executive director of Landmark Columbus, told me that, “while there is no law to prevent demolition, the community has a voice and it has influence.”
The legacy of Miller is now in the hands of Cummins, Inc. Katie Zarich, manager of external communications for Cummins, said: “COHA served Cummins well for several decades… Architecture remains important to Cummins. We are looking for a buyer that will maintain the architectural integrity of the facility.”
It is possible to extend the useful life of buildings. It takes energy, vision and commitment. Let’s hope COHA finds itself the recipient of respect from its new owner.

Theatre for a New Audience at Polonsky Shakespeare Center262 Ashland Place, BrooklynH3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture
“All the world’s a stage, and all men and women merely players.” At today's Archtober tour of the Theatre for a New Audience at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture's Geoff Lynch and David Haakenson explained how the firm took the Bard’s oft-quoted lines to their logical architectural conclusion.
Before even entering the performance space, the theatre’s 60-foot-high hanging glass facade reveals the theater of urban life on the plaza below and invites passers-by to view the actions of theater-goers in the lobby space and balconies.
According to our guides, the origins of the theater date back to the 1970s and '80s, when BAM President Harvey Lichtenstein re-envisioned Fort Greene as the Brooklyn Cultural District. While the BAMbus carted jittery Manhattanites to and from the outer borough, developers and architects renovated and built a number of cultural spaces in the neighborhood, including the BAM Majestic, the Bam Harvey Theater, and the BAM Fisher Building. As development moved in, the Theatre for a New Audience got knocked around to a number of different sites, like a chess piece. No matter where it moved, however, the actual theatre and its dimensions stayed the same.
Inspired by the Cottesloe Theatre in London, the performance space itself has the proportions of an Elizabethan-style theatre. The 8-foot-6-inch balconies are significantly less high than those found in the majestic halls of Times Square, making the experience intimate, even from the “nosebleed section” on the second balcony. The U-shaped viewing areas also allow attendees to look at each other. A performance theater is not a movie theater, Lynch reminded us, and catharsis is experienced collectively.
While Elizabethan in proportions, H3 Hardy made sure to give the Theatre for a New Audience a 21st-century upgrade. The balconies are fixed but seating isn’t, and the space can be rearranged to bring the imaginative visions of theater directors, no matter how eccentric, to the stage. Lynch noted that despite providing the theater with nine different floor configurations, on the opening night of its first production, Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the space was completely unrecognizable, a black box transformed into fairy woodland.
Camila Schaulsohn is Communications Director and Editor-in-Chief of e-Oculus. She was born and raised in Santiago, Chile.

A jury of architects, landscape architects, critics, educators, and planners has named the 35 winning projects of this year's AIA New York Chapter Design Awards. "Each winning project, granted either an 'Honor' or 'Merit' award, was chosen for its design quality, response to its context and community, program resolution, innovation, thoughtfulness, and technique," AIANY said in a statement. "Submitted projects had to be completed by members of the AIA New York Chapter, architects/designers practicing in New York, or be New York projects designed by architects/designers based elsewhere." Take a look at the winning teams in the architecture category below.
But before we get to that, let's start with the Best in Competition distinction which goes to SsD and its Songpa Micro Housing in Seoul, Korea (above). "Like the ambiguous gel around a tapioca pearl, this ‘Tapioca Space’ becomes a soft intersection between public/private and interior/exterior building social fabrics between immediate neighbors," the firm said in a statement. "Finally, as this is housing for emerging artists, exhibition spaces on the ground floor and basement are spatially linked to the units as a shared living room. Although the zoning regulation requires the building to be lifted for parking, this open ground plan is also used to pull the pedestrians in from the street and down a set of auditorium-like steps, connecting city and building residents to the exhibition spaces below."
Okay, now onto the Honor Awards in the architecture category.
Davis Brody Bond
National September 11 Memorial Museum
New York, NY

From the architects: "Remembering the fallen Twin Towers through their surviving physical structural footprints, the 9/11 Memorial Museum stands witness to the tragedy and its impact."

John Wardle Architects and NADAAA
Melbourne School of Design
Melbourne, Australia

From the architects: "The new building for the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning responds to the urban design values identi- fi ed in the Campus Master Plan and enhances the existing open spaces within the historic core of the Centre Precinct of the Parkville Campus. It engages with the existing landscape elements, continues the sequence of outdoor rooms arrayed across the campus, and links strongly to the intricate network of circulation routes that surround the site. The new building compliments and enhances the sense of place that the Eastern Precinct of the Parkville Campus already commands."

REX
Vakko Fashion Center
Istanbul, Turkey

From the architects: "Turkey’s pre-eminent fashion house, Vakko, and Turkey’s equivalent of MTV, Power Media, planned to design and construct a new headquarters in an extremely tight schedule using an unfinished, abandoned hotel. Fortuitously, the unfinished building had the same plan dimension, floor-to-floor height, and servicing concept as another one of our projects, the Annenberg Center’s 'Ring', which had been cancelled. By adapting the construction documents produced for that project to the abandoned concrete hotel skeleton, construction on the perimeter office block commenced only four days after Vakko/Power first approached our team. This adaptive re-use opened a six-week window during which the more unique portions of the program could be designed simultaneous to construction."

From the architects: "The new Elmer A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School and The Harry And Jeanette Weinberg Early Childhood Center, together called Henderson Hopkins, is the fi rst new Baltimore public school built in 30 years. A cornerstone for the largest redevelopment project in Baltimore, it is envisioned as a catalyst in the revitalization of East Baltimore. The seven-acre campus will house 540 K-8 students and 175 pre-school children."

From the architects: "A botanic garden is an unusual kind of museum: a fragile collection constantly in flux. As a constructed natural environment, it is dependent on man-made infrastructures to thrive. New York City’s Brooklyn Botanic Garden contains a wide variety of landscapes organized into discrete settings such as the Japanese Garden, the Cherry Esplanade, the Osborne Garden, the Overlook, and the Cranford Rose Garden. The Botanic Garden exists as an oasis in the city, visually separated from the neighborhood by elevated berms and trees."

From the architects: "The newly-opened Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology demonstrates the University of Pennsylvania’s leadership in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Nanoscale research is at the core of cutting-edge breakthroughs that transcend disciplinary boundaries of engineering, medicine, and the sciences. The new Center for Nanotechnology contains a rigorous collection of advanced labs, woven together by collaborative public spaces that enable interaction between different fields. The University’s first cross disciplinary building, the Singh Center encourages the exchange and integration of knowledge that characterizes the study of this emerging field and combines the resources of both engineering and the sciences."

All the top names in New York City architecture are vying for a piece of Brooklyn Bridge Park, but whether any of their designs will be realized still remains to be seen. As community groups try to block Mayor de Blasio’s controversial plans to bring affordable housing to Michael Van Valkenburgh's celebrated park, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation has unveiled 14 design proposals for two coveted development sites on Pier 6. Those proposals were unveiled just hours before a Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation meeting that was packed with community members voicing their strong opposition to any new development in the park.
The RFP that the corporation issued in May called for two towers—one 315 feet and the other 155—that are 30 percent affordable. This plan has been met with plenty of opposition, and even a lawsuit, from local groups who claim the towers will block views, eat up green space, and not provide appropriate funding for the park. Under a Bloomberg-era deal, revenue from private development at the park is intended to cover its upkeep and maintenance costs. At the meeting, local residents asked the corporation to reevaluate that plan and pursue other forms of funding. Most were adamantly opposed to new residential towers at the 85-acre park.
"This is about developer's greed," shouted one woman during the meeting who was quickly met with applause. There were two individuals with signs that read "Parks for All / Not Condo$ for a Few" and even kids stationed right in front of the corporation's members with homemade signs that read "Save Our Park" and "We Love Our Park." Ultimately, the corporation voted 10-3 not to revisit the funding plan. It will, however, complete a new environmental review of the site.
As the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, if the lawsuit can be resolved, a decision on the site should be made by the end of the year and construction could start about year after that.
The proposals for the pier, which were barely mentioned at the meeting, came from architects including Morris Adjmi, Pelli Clarke Pelli,Bjarke Ingels, Davis Brody Bond, and Selldorf Architects, among others. You can check out all 14 proposals in the slideshow below, which reveal a wide variety of tower aesthetics rendered with most of the standbys we've come to expect in modern visualizations—hot air balloons, regular balloons, and plenty of birds. Surprisingly, not a single kayak.

When Madison Square Garden’s 50-year special permit expired last year, it launched a fiery debate over the future of the arena atop Penn Station. Critics, urban planners, and government officials have called for a 10-year term limit to encourage the relocation of MSG allowing for an overhaul of the crowded station. Today the Municipal Art Society of New York unveiled four different visions for a re-imagined Penn Station and MSG from firms Diller Scofidio + Renfro, H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, SHoP Architects, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
Each firm offered up its own rendition—some focused more on expanding infrastructure, while others honed in on opportunities for cultural and educational programming and new amenities within the station. But all the firms decided to relocate the arena, make room for green space, and create a new light-filled and spacious train terminal. And on the more far-reaching side, they envisioned and described this new station as a civic hub that will anchor and reinvigorate the surrounding neighborhood and serve as a “gateway” (a buzz word liberally used at the unveiling) for the city. The presentations were a fantastical exercise in design if all variables—funding, political might, and private interests—miraculously came together.
H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture was the first to take the stage. The firm recommends re-locating Madison Square Garden to a 16-acre site on the waterfront by the Javits Center, which would then pave the way for a new Penn Station to be built with an eight-track high-speed rail, a three-acre park, retail space, and a roof garden. The Farley Post Office would then be transformed into a Center for Education and the four corners of the station would be privately developed “hybrid buildings.”
SOM has concentrated on providing a robust infrastructure with a network of high-speed rail lines for the North East Corridor, better commuter rail service, and rail lines linking to the major airports in the area. The station will have a ticketing hall in center of building and then two concourses below with retail spaces. The firm would move Madison Square Garden to an adjacent location and imagines private development will crop up around the station.
Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio + Renfro described their “Penn Station 3.0” as a “grand civic space founded on growth and innovation.” The transit node would become “both a front door and living room” that would be “alive 24/7” and organized by “fast, transit-oriented programs” and “slower” activities including retail, cultural space, and restaurants. MSG would then be moved to the west end of the Farley building.
“In closing, we basically would put a wrecking ball to the site,” said Elizabeth Diller.
SHoP Architecture’s Vishaan Chakrabarti started off talking about safety as a critical challenge to the current Penn Station aggravated by a “lack of air” and “disorientation” caused by MSG. The firm envisions an open, light-filled station that would be at the heart of a new district they’ve dubbed “Gotham Gateway.” They would relocate MSG to the Morgan site and create “a link from east to west and north to south” connecting the station, a new park, and the arena. While the other presenters focused on design, SHoP dipped its toe in public policy side of the equation. The firm is calling for the creation of a “Gateway Task Force” consisting of the Vice President, US Transportation Secretary, the governor, and the mayor, which would serve to facilitate a relocation of MSG, spearhead the Gateway Project (including funds for new tunnel, track and station), and provide necessary amenities.